Author: Claude Call

Apologies for the delay; I’m powering through a wicked chest cold, and then my podcasting host was giving me the blues about the audio file, so I eventually had to upload in a different format. I do hope this doesn’t affect your listening experience. Please let me know if it does!

By request:

Tears For Fears–specifically founders Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal–had been kicking around the music scene in the UK for a couple of years, and even had a pretty popular album over there before most people in the United States had even heard of them. (Which reminds me: yes, the story I tell about meeting Curt Smith is true. What I didn’t know at the time was that he was doing Seeds of Love publicity stuff solo because he and Orzabal had temporarily broken up the band.)

Even when it came time for the band to release a single in the United States, the label interceded and suggested that while “Shout” was a perfectly good song, it wouldn’t make for a very good debut song. They turned out to be right, and “Shout” was saved for later on, a move that turned the Songs from the Big Chair album, and Tears for Fears, into a huge success.

There’s more to the story, of course, but why waste it here when you can put it in your head? Either your podcatcher has it, or you’re gonna listen to/download it from here:

No episode next week; I’m taking a planned break. In two weeks, we’ll dig on some early Linda Ronstadt.

And of course, comments, tweets, FB notes, Instas–whatever. I love hearing from you!

David Bowie had already released ten albums by 1976, and he was starting to feel the effects of burnout and a heavy cocaine habit. So where did he go to escape his drug habit? To the world’s Heroin capital, of course: Berlin!

Fortunately for Bowie and ultimately his fans, Heroin wasn’t really his thing, and he not only managed to get healthy, but he also managed to find some creative juice in that city. He wrote, or co-wrote, material for three albums, although only the second one was recorded mostly in Berlin. Those albums today are called the Berlin Trio, or sometimes the Berlin Triptych. They didn’t get a ton of love at the time, largely because Bowie was Bowie and he was streets ahead of everyone else. But “Heroes,” the title track from the second album, grew in stature and in its level of meaning for fans everywhere.

OK, so I promised you a few videos during the show. The first one is his first time performing the song on TV, on the Marc Bolan show. The instrumentation is clearly different but I think he’s singing live-to-track:

The second video is the warm-up to the third. If you’ve seen this one, you can just skip down to the next one. But a lot of people have heard the song without seeing the nearly two minutes of awkwardness that preceded it:

It was for that holiday special that Bowie produced this video, which also appears to be a live-to-track recording, with some extra echo and those extra fun pantomime moves.

But while all that’s fun, it’s probably not what you came looking for. This is probably what you came looking for:

Next week: a listener request takes us into the 80s for some Tears for Fears.

Kansas was literally on the last day of rehearsing for their fifth album when their producer asked them if they had anything else. Guitarist and songwriter Kerry Livgren reluctantly broke out an acoustic song that he was convinced the rest of the band would hate, because it was practically the opposite of everything Kansas had done until then. But it turned out to be exactly the opposite: they loved it, and they fine-tuned the song to give some of the other band members something to do (extra guitar, violin part, and a smidge of percussion), and it turned into the album’s second single and the biggest hit of their career.

Dustiness here, dustiness there…no wonder Caroline is in a pond. She’s gotta wash off all that dust.

And that’s about it, there’s not much mysterious about this song. It’s been either used or referenced in countless pop culture arenas, and it’s been successfully covered a few times, curiously enough by Country singers most of the time. Many people know about Sarah Brightman’s cover of the song, but I’m going to encourage you to check out last year’s recording by Caroline Jones. (No, I don’t know why she’s singing in a pond, unless she wanted to do the exact opposite of Kansas’ video.)

This may come as a complete surprise to you, but if you don’t have podcast software on your mobile device, you can listen to/download the show right here!

The Osmond Brothers got their real start in show business when they couldn’t get an audition for one television show, and they wound up on another.

Check out the audience reaction to them at first. It cracks me up every time.

This clip, incidentally, is from the show Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, which most people seem to remember as The Wonderful World of Disney. Shoot, I was watching the show as a small kid (right after Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom), and remember it under the second title, which wasn’t a thing until 1969. This episode was called “Disneyland After Dark”, and the conceit behind it was that Walt Disney himself would start to introduce the different performers on the show, but he’d never see the acts himself because tourists kept interrupting him. The show, as it originally aired on NBC, was available on DVD for awhile, but appears not to be available now.

This would be later in the group’s career with Andy Williams, since Donny is part of the group now.

The Disney gig led them to another show (The Andy Williams Show), and another. And finally, when they wanted to break out of their Variety TV Group image, they convinced their dad to let them record as a rock and roll band. So off they went to Alabama, as you do, and they put together an album that clearly had a Motown/R&B influence on it.

It wasn’t their first album; in fact it was their SEVENTH. But it’s the one that broke big for them.

The addition of Donny Osmond to the act, and the use of him in exactly the way Motown was using Michael Jackson at the same time, allowed the Osmonds to release their first hit single, and their first Number One record.

What’s the secret to the song’s success? There’s a theory, and it involves fast food.

As usual, here’s the show for those of you who don’t dig podcatchers. And please share the show with someone you love.

Apologies for the big gap in shows; life was getting in the way, plus I got sick somewhere in between and, while my voice would have been pure comedy on your end, it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun on mine. No excuse though; I should have posted SOMEthing in the interim. I’ll do better next time.

Ray Sawyer, 1937-2018

Six episodes ago we took a peek at the work of poet/playwright/singer/songwriter/Renaissance Man Shel Silverstein, and I guess the most notable thing related to that show that’s happened since then, is that Ray Sawyer, the singer/guitarist for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 81 after a short illness. Sawyer was the main singer on “Sylvia’s Mother” and “Cover of Rolling Stone”, among others.

So this week we’re looking at some more of his work, including what’s perhaps his most-covered song (and, oddly, a song that despite all the covers doesn’t seem to do anything on the charts; I think it’s just a song that people like to sing), and a quick look at his theater work.

With any luck, you’ve already got this in your podcatcher, but if not, here it is for your listening/downloading pleasure:

Liner Notes

Theme music is “Surfing Day” by Marcos H. Bolanos, from his album Unchained Melodies, Vol.2, available at this site, and licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. And I hope I did that correctly.

If you’re listening through podcast software, hosting is provided by these folks:

If you’re a podcaster and you use sound clips in your show, go over to Zhorn Software and download Soundboard. There’s no user manual so it’s not immediately friendly, but you’ll pick it up quickly. Another potential, probably more powerful source for you is Jingle Palette, which has some fun stuff pre-loaded.

Audio production gets a huge assist from Auphonic. Tell them I said Hi. They won’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s all right.

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Otherwise, everything else on this website and in the podcast is copyright 2017-20 by Claude Call, except where specific citations are noted. Please alert me to anything I may have omitted.